From the responses to certain issues raised by my column, I feel it’s fair to draw conclusions about my critics. The most vituperative of these responses come from individuals who claim to be pro-choice and do not take kindly to my pro-life position. One hysterical letter-writer sent me a clipping of such a column. My photo had a swastika scrawled over my face and red devil horns drawn on my head. The anonymous scribe also asked if I had crawled out from under a rock in Crawford, Texas.

The next category of Alicia Colon-haters, I am pleased to note, are the animal-rights advocates who assailed me with insults following my unsympathetic column on Pale Male, the red-tailed hawk. One clever (at least he thought so) critic started his e-mail off in the voice of Pale Male. “Screeech – squawk – squawk! Chirp-chirp, tweet – tweet tweet! Caw-Caw-CAW!” Then he went on to lament all that the poor evicted hawk had suffered due to the thoughtless actions of humans. Tsk, tsk.

Missives like those suggest that many pro-choicers appear to be animal rights activists as well. But what will happen when these two hot-button issues collide?

The Westchester county executive, Andrew Spano, recently wrote a letter to Governor Pataki and state legislators asking them for help in launching a statewide drive to secure funds for embryonic stem cell research. A referendum in California authorizing $6 billion in taxpayer dollars for research on embryonic stem cells passed on Election Day, and I presume Mr. Spano expects New York to follow suit.

Will animal-rights advocates be ready to launch protests against using animals in this research, as they have in the past objected to cosmetics industries’ testing their products on animals? Pssst! Rats are being tortured.

The headline of an article written by AP’s Paul Elias read, “Stem cell researcher makes paralyzed rats walk.” The article reports that a young microbiologist, Hans Keirstead, with movie star good looks, injected brain cells concocted from embryonic stem cells into paralyzed rats, enabling them to regain movement. I smell a TV movie in the future, don’t you? Not only is the scientist young and handsome, he also happens to be wealthy. What a perfect combination for the newsmagazines to further romance the startling benefits of embryonic stem cells.

But where is Mr. Keirstead finding paralyzed rats to experiment on? The lab rats are allegedly injected with a viral disease that causes paralysis. I doubt that these rats were pushed off a diving board into shallow water, or were the victims of other tragic accidents that normally cause paralysis. Doesn’t this make the experiment flawed, since paralysis caused by a virus might be more easily repaired by new brain cells than accident-induced paralysis?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals makes no bones about its objections to animal research. On its Web site, PETA states, “People who support animal rights believe that animals are not ours to use for food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other purpose and that animals deserve consideration of their best interests regardless of whether they are cute, useful to humans, or endangered and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all (just as a mentally challenged human has rights even if he or she is not cute or useful and even if everyone dislikes him or her).” I’m assuming that means rats as well.

Thus we can see that my critics will have to decide how to phrase their objections to research that tortures lab rats. Any protest might be viewed as an objection to embryonic research, which is a pro-life position. What a conundrum.

As yet, no human has been helped by embryonic stem-cell therapy. Rats that have been deliberately paralyzed have regained some movement by this therapy but do not achieve complete recovery. Embryonic stem-cell research became an issue in the last presidential campaign because after Ronald Reagan’s death from Alzheimer’s disease, his son Ron Reagan posed it as a possible future cure for several illnesses. Likewise, Christopher Reeve’s widow, Dana Reeve, campaigned for state funds in California, as did Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.

New Yorkers are the most taxed of all Americans. Soon we will be asked to support extremely dubious research. Californians were so influenced by celebrities that they voted for a bad referendum item, and now they regret doing so. I’d like to think New Yorkers are too smart to make the same mistake.

Then I review our voting record and think, “Uh-oh.”